This week's quote comes from a man named Henry Ward Beecher. Beecher was an interesting man who had a way with words. He worked for the Abolitionist cause in hopes of freeing slaves. I've never read any of his persuasive speeches, but I have read Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was written by his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe. It's a powerful (and controversial) read. Because slavery was such a debated subject, the Beecher siblings used words to sway their audiences. Here is Beecher's quotation:
"All words are pegs to hang ideas on."
I love this quotation because it is simple and profound all at the same time. We use a whole lot of words in our every day speech and writing. But, the beauty of our spoken and written language is the fact that we are able to convince, to describe, to explain, to rationalize, to make people angry or sad or happy or scared with WORDS. Our ideas and thoughts are expressed in sound and on paper or on a computer screen. And people (sometimes) understand what we're trying to express. Miraculous!
